FFRF springs a change on Ohio school’s Easter assembly (Feb. 7, 2013)

Thanks to action taken by the Freedom from Religion Foundation and a brave group of Wauseon High School students, the Wauseon, Ohio high school will now have an inclusive spring assembly instead of a proselytizing Easter assembly.

Previous Easter assemblies at the high school encouraged the student body to accept Jesus as their Lord and savior and pressured students to sing Christian songs. A group of students at the high school protested the sermon-like assembly by walking out of the one held in 2012.

FFRF Staff Attorney Stephanie Schmitt sent the school district’s superintendent a May 7, 2012 letter asking him not to schedule religious assemblies in the future because it alienates students and violates the Constitution. Schmitt reminded Robinson all students should be made to feel welcome at school assemblies. She said parents, not the school district, decide whether and which religious concepts to expose their children.

The superintendent responded in a Feb. 7, 2013 letter that the district had asked the high school principal to change the nature, speakers, and format of the assembly. He said the spring assembly will focus on positive student choices.